Installation shots by Yuya Saito
Riku Iioka (Assistant Curator, Yokohama Museum of Art) reviews Ephemera
Transmitted Gestures——Timo Herbst’s Drawings
Exclaiming; gesturing with raised hands, making hand signals; gatherings, occupying; hoisting slogans and images; silence; bodies resonating with others together; circulating images through the media.
Timo Herbst explores gestures of protest. For example Ephemera (2023) presents the tides of the times through chronologically ordered drawings on a 12 meter long Japanese paper, which are based on paintings and archival images of protest from the 15th century to date in Germany. The video installation Play by Rules (2015-) combines footage of protest movements that Herbst filmed together with Marcus Nebe in Budapest, Istanbul, Hamburg, Hong Kong, Kalkutta, Paris, Berlin, et al. These videos capture not only gestures of protest, but also the dynamics in the positional relationship between the people and the journalists who shoot demonstrations.
The show Ephemera at Ken Nakahishi softens its voice as if to isolate itself from the hustle and bustle of the gallery’s location in Shinjuku. Herbst’s early drawings Make Yourself an Organ (2011-2012) depicts progression of body gestures combined with philosophical text. Using multiple layers of Japanese paper— drawn on both sides— combined with wax creates a feeling of depth. Recurring gestures remind us of the dance notations: however some appear to diverge while others seem to echo. The artist does not portray a singular movement, but rather the contours of gestures that converge and blur.
Zipper Merge (2024) offers the impression of layered images through grades of intensity, or perhaps the traces of residual lines through the Japanese paper, which is more delicate than western paper. The images are based on those from historical archives in Europe, for example, in one drawing the Bundschuh Movement (1493-1517) converge with contemporary anti-war movements. In the former case, the peasants plagiarized the two-finger salute, used by aristocrats, to create a protest gesture. The contemporary peace sign that means “anti-war” came from the “V” sign used by politicians as a symbol of victory. Amidst the fight for voting rights in the UK in 1914, the image of a suffragette being torn away from Buckingham Palace is superimposed in another drawing over the images of peasants (dressed as women) trying to destroy the gate as reaction against feudal road tolls in 1843. The superimposition of the tollgate and fence, additionally a pole-wielding, marching peasant and the police who is pulling a woman away merge. Those examples demonstrate the dynamics of compounded movement. The title of the series of drawings Zipper Merge, referring to the point where two streams of traffic merge into one, indicates the overlap of movements from different times and places, creating an arrangement of gestures that transcends beyond individuals.
Visiting the show, I instinctively understood why he used Japanese paper. Timo Herbst’s aesthetic philosophy is inseparably connected with the physical properties of Japanese paper: the skin-like vulnerability, the milky translucency. Transcending the contour of individuals, the protest gestures are transmitted to us.
Riku Iioka (Assistant Curator, Yokohama Museum of Art)
Timo Herbst Ephemera
2024.04.26(Fri)–05.25(Sat)
Open Hours: Tue–Sat, 13:00-20:00
Closed: Sun, Mon
https://kennakahashi.net/en/exhibitions/ephemera